The Conqueror

“Not me, my lord,” Fulk said quietly.

Griffyn swung his head around. “No. Just that, when given the choice, you chose to break faith and stay close to the treasure, rather than your charge, my father.”

Fulk met his gaze. “I’d tell ye why.”

“Then do.”

“Lady Gwynnie.”

Griffyn lifted an eyebrow.

“She’s the why. She was two. I couldn’t even imagine the trials laid out before her. Her brother was alive, but there was something awful about what was happening to de l’Ami, and the civil wars kept getting worse. Men like Marcus and his father Miles were about, running free, marauding the land, getting granted estates. Wanting Guinevere.” He put a hand over his hauberk to tug it straight, but for all the world, it looked like he was putting his fist over his heart, like a pledge. “She’s my why. I’d do it again.”

Griffyn’s palm was still on Alex’s chest, holding him back. Alex tore free and backed up a few unsteady paces. Griffyn lifted his eyebrows. Alex flung up his hands, looking down and away. “I’m fine.”

“Are you done?”

He nodded. The sun was still blazing onto his body, burning him up. “Aye. I’m done.”

Griffyn waited a moment, then turned to Fulk. “Guinevere. Does she know?”

“No. She knows nothing. Nothing about the Grail Hallows, nothing about yer fathers ’cept they hated one another. She knows nothing about ye either, my lord, yer destiny. Nothing about the travails of every soul who’s ever guarded the treasure, the same treasure she’s been guarding all these years in ignorance.”

Fulk bent one side of his mouth in the façade of a smile. “And I must say, that seems a bit unfair. And mighty dangerous.”

Chapter Seven

Gwyn tiptoed down the curving staircase to the lord’s chambers with her heart in her throat. She encountered no one. No guard had been placed at the lord’s chambers; Pagan must have thought his threat sufficient bulwark against disobedience.

He has much to learn, she thought sourly.

Her determination did not eclipse her fear, though, and when she reached the landing and one long, terrified glance across its vast five foot space assured her no one was near, she broke into a cold sweat of relief. Her subsequent journey through the lord’s antechamber—so recently her own antechamber—induced a health-endangering thundering of her heart no leech could have quieted.

When she finally pushed open the door to the inner chamber and found the room empty, she sighed so deeply a cat curled on the bed meowed disconsolately, roused from a warm nap.

“Mores the pity such a one as you doesn’t know his wrath,” she muttered as she stalked by. Pagan had a cat?

Indeed he did, perhaps the most orange-eared, fur-endowed, long-clawed creature ever assembled. It peered at her through blue, angular eyes, then yawned and stretched out a paw, as if welcoming her. Gwyn resisted the urge to stroke the feathery head and turned instead to one particular woven tapestry that had not—praise God—been ripped down along with the rest.

In fact, the room vibrated barrenness. The shield that had hung above the bed, encrusted with the image of a gauntleted hand gripping a rose, and the blood of Englishmen shorn of their greatness when Stephen came to power, was gone. The stone was brighter where it had hung for eighteen years, revealing the unseen wear that had occurred everywhere else.

The long, narrow table by the window was gone, as was the wardrobe where she folded her underlinens. Her face flushed hot. Had he taken that too? Good Lord, who had unpacked it?

She pushed aside the heavy tapestry and felt for the handle of the hidden door, then descended into the dark.

&n

bsp; Wet cobbles toyed with her footing but a firm hand on the walls let her descend without incident. The castle underworld was dark and cloying, yet damp, and quiet as death.

She hurried to the chamber. The padlock hung open, the dragon’s mouth in a silent roar. She called out softly, and the door cracked open. Duncan’s pale little face looked at her, illuminated by the thick, stubby candle he held. She stepped inside and glanced down. The prince’s body lay motionless on the straw.

“How does he?”

“I cannot say for sure, milady, but I’ve got him tucked so deeply in blankets and furs so he’ll break a sweat if he tries to sneeze. But, milady,” the boy’s voice dropped into a whisper. The echoes came off the wet stone, bouncing moist worry back to her ears. “He’s well far gone.”

“Well,” she said lightly, lifting the hem of her skirts, “he will simply have to hang on. We have.”

“Aye, but we’re not knocked into pieces by fevers and bad humours. I fear he cannot hang on much longer. He’s closer to death than life, and there’s a fact.”